literature

My Kind of Crazy! Part 2: Leveling Up

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    Do you hate time skips in animes? Especially 2-year time skips where every character either looks drastically different or has grown five years within those two years? Me too! So for once, I won't take the easy way out and use huge time skips. Well, not in this chapter anyway. But enough about the anime named after a cleaning solution! You want to hear about Viola now. But I'm important too ya know. If I wasn't, why would I be the main character? Moving on. So after our first date, we talked the whole way home. She showed me where she lived and it was a 6-minute walk to get there from my house. Why so specific? I had a watch and checked it often. She changed the subject once we got to her door.
    "So, um, if you don't live too far away, can I come to your house sometime? Don't worry if there's a mess, mine is not much better. See for yourself." She turned the key in the lock and we walked inside. Immediately I noticed some stuff. There was a big mess in the living room with games and anime DVDs strewn about in front of a big flat screen TV. There was a laptop in the corner on a desk and some headphones connected to a portable gaming system on the couch. Alongside it was the shirt she'd worn yesterday in the anime club. And of course, a bookshelf full of manga. "Viola! Welcome to my domain! It is a Fortress of Solitude! But that's probably because I live alone. Make yourself comfortable. I'll get some snacks and we can play some games. Her face seemed to light up at the thought of having a person to be her Player 2. I took a second look around to see that she had several different game consoles, but only two seemed to be used much. Some of the games on the floor were fighting games, others were racing games, and most were two-player in some way. Had she prepared for this?
    She came back with a box of cheese-flavored crackers which she proceeded to wedge between the couch cushions to keep it in place. We both sat down. A mischievous smile began to form and she said "YOU are playing THIS first! I wanna know how good you are. If you succeed, I might even kiss you." She flipped on the TV and handed me the controller. Immediate there was the title screen of a downloaded game and it was most likely a dating sim. Clearly this had been planned. "All you need to do is finish the first chapter and begin the second with a specific girl's path established as the main focus. In other words, get the girl I ask for to become the main love interest by the start of chapter two. Her name is Hanako. It didn't take long to realize that this one was a bit different than most. For one, all of the students in the game's school were handicapped or disabled in one way or another. I eventual met the specified girl, she was a burn victim.
    I wasn't aware of it at the time, but Viola had been watching my reactions to certain things. Her challenge wasn't exactly difficult, but rather easy to accidentally trigger the path of Hanako's friend instead of her. But before long I'd done it. The shy burn victim girl had begun to take a liking to my character. When the Chapter 2 screen came up, Viola watched while munching on her snack crackers. She said "Help yourself, or else I'll eat them all on you. And great job. You pass. Here's your reward." She kissed me, as promised, but on the forehead. I half-expected it to be honest. "You've gotta work your way up if you want anything more, you should've learned that from the dating sim. Put in the work, and you get a better reward. Next one is Rin, but that can wait for another day, for now we fight for glory and to the death!" She popped in a fighting game and beat me several times. Next was a kart-racer, and again, she won. But when we played a party game that included a bunch of mini-games, guess who won.....the computer player.
    I headed home around midnight, happy but a bit sleepy. We had played games and watched some anime together. She also let me have the remainder of the snack crackers. I remembered some of the stuff that happened on my way home. Our hands had met over the box of crackers, but she pushed my hand away and took a handful first. Thus ended my first date with my first girlfriend. The next day, I invited her over. I lived alone too, but my house was only an apartment. I didn't clean up too much, if she was going to be here, I wanted her to know how I am. So she would know what to expect.
    It was the weekend, so we had all day. After my usual morning practices, I got ready to see her and went outside to my apartment building's porch. It had a good view of both directions, so I'd see her coming. After a few minutes, I heard a familiar song from a video game. And mere seconds later, I saw Viola walking down the street playing an ocarina. When she was right in front of my house, I said to her "Well, if it isn't my favorite pied piper!" She shoved me and laughed. I asked why she was playing that particular song. Her answer was amusing,
    "I was trying to make it rain, besides, that's the only song I know how to play. You're free to try it out if you'd like, but somehow I doubt you know how to play it." with that, she handed it  to me and walked up the porch steps to the door. "Although, I did have another reason for playing it just now....." She licked her lips with a sly grin. But before i could try to play it myself, I had to unlock the door for her. I was halfway there when she opened it herself. I checked my pocket to find no keys in it, but a small slip of paper with "XD" drawn on it. She stole my keys. This crazy girl....stole my keys. I just laughed to myself and followed her in.
    "So, I see you took it upon yourself to open it on your own." She told me she'd give them back when I beat her in a video game. Until then she'd keep them somewhere safe. If, by the end of the day, I still hadn't beaten her in a game, then she gets to go to the hardware store to have a key made for herself. As she said this, she twirled the keyring around her finger in triumphant mocking fashion. I immediately checked my other pocket to make sure my wallet wasn't gone.
    "I'm not THAT skilled at pick-pocketing yet. But if I were just a bit better at lock-picking, I probably could've opened it regardless. Still, this method WAS more fun." I just shook my head and sighed at her oddly intriguing skill set. She looked around my apartment in every room until she finally began inspecting my bedroom. A quick look around and she said "Hmm, I expected more from you, but not bad. She walked up to one of the wall scrolls I had and began studying it like it was fine art. "Good enough, some of the other posters make up for it. Nice figures too." She picked one up and looked at from several angles before stopping to simply say "Hmm, no stripes...." She put it down and flipped through some of my manga. By now, I knew questioning her would be pointless. Especially about where she put my keys.
    I had only so many games, but of course she never said "video" games. She even beat me at some of my best games. She had come prepared, her portable game on her at all time, same as me. After negotiations for each battle, we pit our teams against each other. I lost every time, but she acknowledged my prowess. I already knew kart-racing games were a bad idea, so I tried several board games and even a drawing challenge I saw online once. An anime trivia game......even Monopoly! (We quickly grew bored of the last one and called it a draw.) It was sunset and we were on our way to get her key made. She actually paid for it herself. Then she turned to me. She gave me back my keys and proposed one last challenge to me.
    I'll make a riddle, and it will be your clue. If you can find where MY key is in 30 seconds, I'll give you a copy of MY house key, how 'bout that? " I agreed. Here was her riddle:

"Something is missing,
but is it my key?
When I leave this behind,
things I have become free.

Figure this out,
and I might let you see,
something close to my heart,
in all of its glory."

    The answer seemed too obvious, and I don't like to assume. Viola might mean that, but you never really know for sure. No, she CAN'T mean that, she said something earlier that proves it. Regardless, I needed an answer and fast! Clearly she was using the clue to make me forget that the real answer isn't what was missing. But her key is probably close to it. I though I had the answer, so I said it. "It's behind you on the counter!" She leaned in close to me with a smile and kissed me on the cheek.
    "Well-played, I hoped you would get it right! You could've answered something else, but you would've been wrong. Here's the key, and now I'll show you the other thing in the riddle." She pulled out a picture of her cosplaying as the character that started the very beginning of our relationship. "I bet you were expecting something different, weren't you? Well that might take a while. This whole thing seems to be going too fast. And I'm a bit nervous of how things will be from now on. But I think I can trust you. This was a big step to take in our relationship, so I hope we can just stay at this stage for a while. Now let's go home." She was right, it was a huge vote of confidence to do this. I didn't want things to get too far too fast either, so I was fine with it. It was a crazy thing to do since we only knew each other for about 3 days so far. Then again, that girl is my kind of crazy!
Once again, I use assumptions to make things less predictable. Like I said before, I'll try to keep it up to the level of a 16+ anime or manga. Unless I am specifically asked in a Note to include more mature events. I won't keep it that way for the rest of the series unless I get Notes from several people asking me to. Either way, I will try to post more for this series when I can. If i do somehow end up finishing it eventually and am satisfied with how much it seems people liked it, I might start another series that tells things from Viola's point of view, including some of her time before meeting Alan.
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